Directions:

A. FIRST READ: Mark the text after numbering the paragraphs. Underline key points or ideas that
seem important. Circle words you dont know. Put a question mark (?) by confusing text. Annotate by
adding comments in the margins (reflections, connections, etc.).
B. SECOND READ: As you listen to the speech, highlight any place in the text that is emphasized by
King.
C. Answer the question sheet in complete sentences.
D. THIRD READ: With a partner, read and name the rhetorical devices in the margins.

What Is Your Lifes Blueprint? by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I want to ask you a question, and that is: What is in your lifes blueprint? This is a most
important and crucial period in your lives. For what you do now and what you decide now at this age
may well determine which way your life shall go. Whenever a building is constructed, you usually have
an architect who draws a blueprint, and that blueprint serves as the guide for those who are to build the
building. A building is not well erected without a good, sound, and solid blueprint.
Now, each of you is in the process of building the structure of your lives, and the question is
whether you have a proper, a solid, and a sound blueprint.
I want to suggest some of the things that should be in your lifes blueprint. Number one in your
lifes blueprint should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your own worth, and your own
somebodiness. Dont allow anybody to make your feel that you are nobody. Always feel that you count.
Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance. Now, that
means that you should not be ashamed of your color. You know, its very unfortunate that in so many
instances, our society has placed a stigma on the Negros color.
Secondly, in your lifes blueprint, you must have as the basic principle the determination to
achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor. Youre going to be deciding as the years unfold
what you will do in lifewhat your lifes work will be. Once you have decided what it will be, set out to
do it, and to do it well.
And I say to you, my young friends, that doors are opening to each of youdoors of
opportunities that were not open to your mothers and to your fathersand the great challenge facing
you is to be ready to enter these doors as they open.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great essayist, said in a lecture in 1871 that if a man can write a
better book or preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, even if he builds
his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.
That hasnt always been truebut it will become increasingly truebut it will become
increasingly true, and so I would urge you to study hard, to burn the midnight oil; I would say to you,
dont drop out of school. I understand all of the sociological reasons why we often drop out of school,
but I urge you in spite of your economic plight, in spite of the situation that youre forced to livestay in
school.
And when you discover what you are going to be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty
called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Do that job so well that a the living, the dead, or
the unborn couldnt do it any better.
If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures.
Sweep streets like Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep
streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street
sweeper.
IF you cant be a pine on the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. But be the best little shrub
on the side of the hill. For it isnt by size that you win or you fail. Be the best of whatever you are.
Finally, in your lifes blueprint, there must be a commitment to the eternal principles of beauty,
love, and justice. Dont allow anybody to pull you so low as to make you hate them. Dont allow
anybody to cause you to lose your self-respect to the point that you do not struggle for justice.
However young you are, you have a responsibility to seek to make life better for everybody. And so you
must be involved in the struggle for freedom and justice.












What Is Your Lifes Blueprint? by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Use the text to answer the following questions. Be specific and refer to the speech.
1. Summarize the three principles that Dr. King says are important to have in your lifes blueprint.






2. Why do you think Dr. King refers to a lecture made by Ralph Waldo Emerson? In your own
words, paraphrase what Emerson said. How does this fit into Dr. Kings blueprint for life?






3. A metaphor is a literary device where something is described in terms that are unlike that thing.
Dr. King is using an extended metaphor in this speech. He compares a life plan to an architects
blueprint. On your own, extend the metaphor even further. What would the bricks, wood, and
steel of your own life be?